


Maybe We're All Just Sleeping Beauties

by anamatics



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/F, Female-Centric, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They first met when they were very young.  They grew up together and in the moment before their parting, they finally learned with true love really meant.  Season Two spoilers, Mulan/Aurora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe We're All Just Sleeping Beauties

The problem with being a noble, frozen in time, and on an epic quest is that somewhere along the way, the point of it all is lost.  There is so much that is left out of every story, you see.  There is pain that is allowed to fester, and a sense of desperation that taints every second once one returns to the living.

Magic always comes at a terrible cost.

*

They first met when they were young.  Aurora's mother had sent her across the sea to escape the turmoil of the Enchanted Forest.  The feud between her family and the witch, Maleficent was long standing and brutal.  They had thought it best to send their daughter away to keep her safe.

The Blue Fairy had offered to grant their daughter safe passage across the sea, on a ship captained by a man named Sinbad.  He was a great sailor, and young Aurora had loved every minute of the waves beneath her feet.

Across the sea, the people were different.  They followed different beliefs and their magic was different, tied up in a kinship with dragons that frightened Aurora as a child.  Even the dragons were different, long and snake-like, not the sheep-eating beasts that plagued her parents kingdom.  

She was to stay with a respected soldier's family.  He was a friend of her father's, King Stefan, from the last round of Ogre Wars.  Fa Zhou was a man of knowledge, dedicating his life to the teachings of the ancients.  His language in the common tongue was accented but he stood beside Aurora every day and told her of his people.

Despite the bond she formed with the aging Zhou, Aurora's first real friendship came in the form of Zhou's young daughter - a girl named Mulan.  She was as spirited as Aurora and they spent many days playing in the garden outside of the Fa household.  Skinned knees and ripped dresses and leggings plagued the girls as they grew together.

The peace they felt was marked, plagued really, by the letters they received from Aurora's father and mother.  They filled Aurora with a longing for her people and her parents that she could never shake.  

"I wish I could get older and marry a prince who would kill Maleficent so that we may finally have peace!" Aurora sobbed into Fa Zhou’s robes after he read a particularly gristly letter from her father. 

Zhou reached down and patted her hair, smoothing the frizz and wrinkles away and tucking them back into her braid.  He let his hand linger there, long fingers creating soothing strokes as Aurora cried.  When she quieted, he asked, “What good is peace if it is brought on by violence?”

Aurora raised tear-streaked cheeks to face the man who had become closer to her than her own father.  She knew the answer to the question, for she had learned the teachings of the ancients from this man.  “It would be a bad peace,” she explained, and Fa Zhou nodded his approval.

Sitting just outside the door, another little girl made a promise that she hoped would one day win her father’s approval.  Her fists clenched on her knees and her jaw set determinedly, Mulan swore on her ancestors that she would be the one to kill the witch and bring Princess Aurora’s happiness.  

*

As Mulan grew, she found herself stealing into the soldier’s school and training with the boys.  She was found out again and again, but her prowess was enough to earn Aurora’s affections.  

When they were on opposite ends of their fourteenth summers, Aurora had tied a ribbon from her hair around Mulan’s arm before a tourney.  “Be my champion?” the princess had asked with an innocent smile.

Raising her fist to her chest, Mulan had smiled and nodded.  She fought as though possessed, tossing her final opponent to the ground before the city magistrate.  

“Who is this brave young man who fights so valiantly?” the magistrate asked as Mulan bowed before him, her sword in two hands before her.  

The quartermaster of the barracks shook his head.  “I do not know, magistrate,” he whispered.

“Boy,” the magistrate said, and Mulan raised her eyes to him.  “Who is your father?”

“Fa Zhou,” Mulan replied clearly.  Aurora watched in horror as Mulan removed the padded helmet from her head and tucked it under her arm.  “And I am no boy.”

She had won the tourney fair and square, and the quartermaster urged the magistrate to make an exception and let Mulan into their training program for the elite guard who traveled far across the seas to fight alongside kings and queens.  Aurora felt her heart swell that day, watching as Mulan was named the champion of the city.

*

She had reached her seventeenth summer just as Mulan was entering her eighteenth when the letter from her father finally came.  She accepted it from the sailor with trembling hands, fearful of the news it would bring.  

_ Your mother seems to have finally gotten through to our enemy, _ it read in her father’s precise hand.  _Inroads to peace have finally been made.  You can come home, daughter._

To return home surly meant marriage that would bring a peace that her people had probably not known for many years. It was in this moment, when she stood at the docks reading her father’s letter, Aurora wanted to tear the letter up and cast it back into the sea.  She could not bear the thought of leaving this place.

She could not bear to lose what she refused to believe she had.

“What does it say,” Mulan asked, leaning over her shoulder and pulling at the letter.

Aurora jerked her hand away and ducked it inside her robes.  She scowled at her friend and shook her head sadly.  “It brings ill tidings,” she explained, looking into the strong brown eyes of the girl she had come to call her champion.

Mulan fingered the sword at her belt and sighed, “Your father wishes you to return home.”

How she guessed, Aurora would never know.  The tears that had been threatening to come since she had read her father’s cruel missive seemed imminent now and she did not trust herself to speak.  She nodded mutely and threw her arms around her friend, burying her face in Mulan’s neck and sobbing quietly. 

* 

That night, they sat in Fa Zhou’s garden, staring up at the fireflies as they danced among the stars.  Fa Zhou had begun to make preparations with one of the five brothers – the boy who could swallow the sea – to take Aurora across the ocean on his boat.  They had slipped away, the men deep in conversation as the women were ignored.

They sat side by side, their shoulders pressing together in light summer robes.  Aurora could feel every twitch and every breath of Mulan’s as they stared up at the sky together. 

The sight was simply breathtaking, the stars drove a high arch over the moon and the fireflies moved to and fro beneath them all.  Aurora found herself staring at the largest star in the sky and recalling the stories she had learned as a young child about that beautiful star.  It had once been a firefly, the stories went, and that was why fireflies always came out to celebrate with the star – it was the one time they could be together again.

Mulan’s fingers laced with Aurora’s and she felt her eyes flutter shut, her mind straining as she wished with all her heart.

_Evangeline, if you can hear this, please don’t this be the last time that I see her._

She could feel breath on her cheek and warm fingers on her chin, trailing down to tilt her head up.  Warm lips paused, then pushed firmly against her own, and it was in that moment that Aurora finally understood what the stories were talking about when they spoke of true love.

It was true love’s first kiss, under the shade of a maple tree while the fireflies danced overhead.  No words were spoken, for nothing could ever truly define this moment.  Aurora let herself be loved, falling back onto the grass and pulling at Mulan so that her dark hair and eyes were framed by the dancing stars overhead.

In that moment, she was the most beautiful thing Aurora had ever seen.

*

Aurora does not think of their parting.  The pain of that wound is far too deep.

*

Phillip – Phil – came later.  He was there when she was welcomed back to her homeland, but did not speak to her then.  His father owned far more land than Aurora’s family, and it was a good match.  Their engagement is announced and Aurora tries her best to smile at her future husband. It was too painful to do anything more than hold his hand, and when he kisses her for the first time, she finds herself shoving him violently away.  She knew that her heart was not in it, her mind far across the sea.

Still he was good and kind to her despite her obvious rejection. Aurora knew the stories.  She had been taught from a young age that true love only comes once in a lifetime and that she would never have another chance at love if she lost this love.

She had not realized it at their parting, but Mulan was her one and only. 

Aurora spent many days caught up in her on head, ignoring her father’s court and floating through the daily peace talks and discussions.  She felt as though there was a haze over her heart and mind, and she could not find it in her to apply the effort needed for matters of state.

At one particularly awful state dinner a few months after her return home, Aurora found herself sitting across the table from King Leopold’s widow. Why she was at Aurora’s father’s court was anyone’s guess. She had simply showed up, stated that her kingdom shared a border with King Stefan’s and she had a vested interest in making sure that her border villages were not cut off as new trade routes were determined.

“Tell me dear,” Queen Regina said conversationally as Aurora busied herself with eating all of the peas out of her soup.  “Where have you been all these years?”

Aurora knew that her disappearance had caused quite a stir when she was a child, Fa Zhou had told her stories of what the sailors had learned upon traveling to King Stefan’s kingdom.  She met the queen’s dark eyes and shrugged.  “I was in Han.”

The queen seemed to contemplate this, weighing options and pretending to look busy swirling the wine in her wineglass.  “I hear the Middle Kingdom is lovely,” the queen eventually said judiciously.  Her expression was carefully neutral, betraying absolutely nothing.  Aurora was impressed that she managed to maintain such a perfect court face at such a chaotic state dinner.

Still, the pang in her heart that Aurora felt upon hearing the common tongue name of Mulan’s kingdom cut her like a knife.  She bent her head to turn her attention back to her peas, her eyes stinging at the corners as the tears she’d spent many long hours tried to hold back threatened to burst forth.  “It is the most beautiful land in the realm,” Aurora choked out, thinking of how the sun shined in Mulan’s hair and how she was at her most beautiful among the autumn leaves.

It would not be proper to cry in front of a queen, and Aurora reached for her napkin as discretely as possible.  She thought of the wish she’d made and her prayers that Evangeline had heard it.  She thought of how Mulan had sworn to her that she would find a way across the sea with honor. 

“Your face betrays you, princess,” The queen murmured, her expression not unkind.  “You speak as if you have lost something.” 

Aurora sighed, and dabbed at her eyes more openly.  She did not want to appear red-eyed during the dancing later, she knew it would hurt Phillip’s feelings if she cried before him.  “I…”

“Don’t worry about it, dear,” The queen said, picking up her wine and taking a long sip of it. “Such things have a particularly annoying habit of returning to you.”

*

Maleficent sent a wedding gift for Aurora.  It was truly a woman’s gift - a spinning wheel.  It was beautiful and it was deadly.  Aurora pricked her finger on the wheel one day, and found herself asleep forevermore.

*

“Why isn’t it working?”  Phillip demanded as he kissed Aurora’s lips while glaring across the chamber at his companion.  They’d gotten his far, finally a solid lead after years upon years of searching.  “You said true love’s kiss would break any spell.”

“I never said it had to be your kiss,” his companion retorted, yanking off her helmet and shoving it into his hands.  “I do not want her to know me, not yet.”

“Then what?” Phillip demanded, “You want me to break her heart and tell her I did it?”

Biting her lip, Fa Mulan nodded.  “I do not yet have what I need to protect her honor.  I am… unfit to be her true love.”

Phillip rolled his eyes and stepped back, muttering about Middle Kingdomers and their stupid obsession with honor and respect and duty. 

The kiss that woke the Princess Aurora come briefly, before Phillip was shoved back over to stand beside her and Mulan pulled her helmet back.  Her expression was stony behind her faceguard as Phillip embraced her love, and her hands tightened into fists.

She would do this yet.

 *

The wraith that found them was strange and unknown, an enemy that they knew well but one that was unexpected in this strange castle.  This castle was deep in Phillip's father's former lands - many leagues from where her finger had been pricked by the spindle that was Maleficent's wedding gift to them all.  

Aurora couched, her whole body aching, beside the woman she now knew to be her love.  She wanted to reach out and to touch Mulan, to feel her and make sure she was real.  

The dreams she'd had were terrible and full of danger.  She did not like them and she felt as though she'd lived a thousand lifetimes while asleep.  

The wraiths were new, and they scared her.  "I'm going after him," Mulan said stubbornly and Aurora sighed.  

"Mulan," the name felt clumsy on her lips.  They were speaking common tongue now, and the accents were all wrong.  "Don't think I'll let you do this alone."

The stubborn set of her own jaw matched Mulan's and eventually she earned a weak smile.  "Fine," Mulan huffed and Aurora leaned forward and pressed her lips to Mulan's cheek.

"Glad you see it my way," she whispered, and hoped up on the back of the horse.  She leaned down and offered Mulan her arm.  "We'll do this together."

*

It all came full cycle somehow and now it was Phillip who lay between life and death.  Aurora touched his face and felt herself begin to cry.  "He was a good man," she whispered.  "He doesn't deserve this."

"We'll save him," Mulan promised, her arm around Aurora's shoulders.  "Come, though, we must leave this place."

Aurora paused just long enough to feel the malevolent feel of magic all around them. It smelled of sulfur and made her want to gag.  "Can I..." she didn't know what she was asking for, but as Mulan relaxed against her, Aurora knew that it was okay to rise up on her toes so that their eyes were level.  She could see the fear in Mulan's eyes, Aurora wanted nothing more than for it to go back to how it had been before everything had changed.

Their kiss was brief and full of the promise that Aurora wished for what seemed like only a short time ago - she was asleep for twenty nine years, which blew her mind.  Mulan smelled of leather and of sage, not of the youthful innocence and cherry blossoms of their youth.  It was all so strange and new, and Mulan kissed with an authority that Aurora lacked.

"You are my one true love," Aurora said as they pulled away.  "I will never let my father force me to marry for status and land."

Mulan shook her head.  "I am not worthy of your love, Aurora."

She shook her head, "We'll call it a loan.  You will earn your honor by saving Phillip and this kingdom, and then we can be married and live happily ever after."

There was a pained look in Mulan's eyes and she shook her head slowly.  "All the happy endings are gone."

"Then we'll just have to make our own," Aurora said with a daring smile.  She was fool hearty, but she was in love.  She was allowed, she thought.

*


End file.
